Funding 2018: who raised the most? Airbnb posts profit for FY18

2018 has been an eventful year for the startup ecosystem, to say the least. Unlike 2017, there weren’t any super-giant funding rounds this time around, and yet the year is about to close with two billion-dollar rounds of funding – one by Swiggy and another by OYO. Altogether the total funding raised stands at close to $12.7 billion as we see more and more startups enter the ‘unicorn’ club like PolicyBazaar, BYJU's, and Freshworks.

Despite a profit of Rs 2.8 crore in FY17, Amazon Wholesale India reported a net loss of Rs 131 crore in FY18. The increase in loss comes even as the company's revenue increased to Rs 12,245 crore in FY18, from Rs 7,069.8 crore in FY17. The revenue increase has also come at the cost an of increase in expenses by the company that grew to Rs 12,377 crore in FY18 from Rs 7,059 crore in FY17. The revenue boost was primarily driven by the growth in the business of consumer electronics.

The India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) has launched an accelerator to incubate fabless semiconductor startups and existing SMEs in this segment. Over the next three years, the plan is to incubate at least 20 early-stage startups and take this number to 50 in the course of the next five years. The Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab SFAL is also expecting that this initiative would enable the design of semiconductor chips in products like energy meters, LED lighting, smartcards, rural broadband and IoT solutions.

Slack Co-founder Cal Henderson on their biggest competition

Team messaging major Slack has one agenda – to bridge the gap in team productivity. However, team productivity – closely linked with team communication – can be an uphill task for most organizations. “Because it is a behavioural change for an entire team versus one person,” explains Cal Henderson, Co-founder of Slack, “Our biggest competition is the inertia to change. And the problem is multifold when we talk about a team.”